LOL, "RuneScape."

Talk about the worst sleepover ever: A Welsh teenager appeared in court Monday for logging on to his now-former friend’s profile for an online roleplaying game and trading away six years' worth of credits. He wanted to get back at his friend for an earlier argument in the world's most mature manner.

Further entrenching his status as a complete dick, suspect Keiron Belmont, 19, also stole two bottles of booze before fleeing. He was staying at victim Helen Jenkin's house, who told the court that Mr. Belmont had unlawfully accessed her partner's computer, entered the RuneScape account and depleted a half-decade's worth of hard gaming.

Mr. Belmont's lawyer explained that he knew the computer and game's passwords because he's used them previously, but even he acknowledged how stupid this is:

"These credits do not have any real value — their only value is in the game," the lawyer said. "I would compare it to Monopoly money — purely because it is online should not make a difference, though the profile is clearly personal."

Mr. Belmont plead guilty in an earlier hearing for the stolen alcohol, but had to pay Ms. Jenkins $30 in compensation for the unauthorized entry to her computer. Sadly, the court didn’t strike him with a separate penalty for the depleted coins…probably because they’re fake.

Bathhouse. (Photo: Kotaku)

Pray for Nintendo’s PR department, as it’s undoubtedly going to face the wrath of some very angry gaymers. Last week, the company released a life-simulation game that let male characters to marry the same sex. But an update released yesterday removed that supposedly unintended feature...OF HAPPINESS.

In the new, Japanese-language game Tomodachi Collection: New Life (think The Sims meets cute, Japanese anime), male Mii characters could date, marry, raise children and presumably be miserable together, too. Despite the female characters not having the same interactions, the "bug" delighted users. Gaming blog Kotaku wrote that Japanese players planned on purchasing the game because of the quirk.

Nintendo never officially recognized that the feature was unintended, but an update released Monday patched the gay marriage feature. NPR writes that the company said that some of the relationships were "funny" or "strange," depending how the Japanese message is translated. The company veers from controversy and the country doesn't officially recognize gay marriage. It's also not scheduled to be released stateside.

Thomas Whitehead, a blogger for Nintendo Life, wrote that decision is disappointing to some:

Whether unintentional or not, due to the political and social sensitivities of the issue Nintendo has been faced with a decision in terms of maintaining male-female marriages only, or using the discovered feature as an opportunity to open up the experience to same-sex couples.

Your move, r/Gaymers.

(Photo: Flickr)

If there was one salient lesson gleaned from the two-hour, day-glo sex romp that was Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, it was this: just pretend that life's a video game. As it turns out, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley maintains the same mantra. At the Twofixsix conference in Brooklyn, presented by gaming magazine Kill Screen, Mr. Crowley told the crowd that his success in tech largely hinges on his love of video games.

"The Zelda games were a big influence on how I saw the city,” Mr. Crowley said, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, they made him wonder, "Can you apply that magical experience you have in those games and bring them out into the real world?"

Instead of a magical experience, though, Mr. Crowley came up with Foursquare, an app for bragging to people about the time you went above 14th Street.

You too could be successful in tech, if only you can pretend life is a video game with no financial or emotional consequences. Just think of a down round like losing and having to start from the beginning of the level!

(Photo: Social Roulette)

Update: Facebook has revoked API access for Social Roulette, effectively killing the app. Bang.

If you've long considered acquiescing to the groans of privacy wonks and straight up deleting your Facebook account, but couldn't quite bring yourself to commit social media suicide, we may have found a solution for you.

Social Roulette is a game that gives you a one in six chance of deleting your Facebook account. If you lose, the game will delete all of your posts, friends, photos and other elements of your profile before completely deactivating it. If you're lucky enough to survive, the message "I just played Social Roulette and survived" will be published to your wall.

Created by Jonas Lund, Jonas Jongelan and NYU ITP adjunct professor Kyle McDonald, the game is the perfect solution for people who are just too afraid to pull the deactivate trigger themselves.

https://twitter.com/roulettenet/status/333269286929985536

We're admittedly too scared to play. What about all our pictures from senior prom??

(h/t Laughing Squid)

Art. (Photo: Polygon)

The future is finally here: Microsoft and Pizza Hut have launched a new app for Xbox Live that lets users order the Crazy Cheesy Crust Pizza (and other assorted items!) straight from their Xbox 360.  Users link their Xbox Live and Pizza Hut accounts (who has a Pizza Hut account?) and then purchases can be made via the game controller, voice input or Kinect gestures, which totally counts as exercise.

Plus, the app takes care of pesky social interaction for you. There’s Facebook integration so you can brag to your friends that you’re the brave soul sitting on your couch eating pizza and playing Bioshock. Larry Hyrb, the director of programming for Xbox, told Polygon that the app has been in development for a while:

"We're always looking at ways to give our audience more of what they're interested in," he said. "If you look at our audience, they love pizza. I mean, who doesn't? It has international appeal, and Pizza Hut is a recognized brand that matches up well with the Xbox brand."

Now the only time gamers have to get off the couch is when their moms tell them to close the basement door.

Could've gone better.

Does anything rouse anger quite like gaming? Consumerist has just concluded its tournament for the worst company in America, and for the second year in a row, Electronic Arts took the top spot. That means Consumerist readers hate EA even worse than Bank of America, a company that'll basically pick your pocket if you let your bank balance drop below a certain threshold. It wasn't even close: 78 percent of voters picked EA.

Consumerist writes:

"It’s only a fractured, antiquated public perception that video games are somehow frivolous holdovers from childhood that allows gamers to be abused and taken advantage of by the very people who supply them the games they play."

In other words, EA is learning what little brothers all over America spent the late '90s learning the hard way: Do NOT mess with somebody's Sim City game.

EA's response to this latest embarrassment? In a blog post titled "We can do better," COO Peter Moore admitted mistakes ranging from the Sim City disaster to disappointing games and "missteps on new pricing models." But then he strolled down a path lined with straw men, culminating in the suggestion that homophobes tried to stuff the ballot box:

In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games.  This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America.

Come on, Peter. You can't magick this away by blaming social conservatives any more than I can disappear my city's problems by cranking taxes up to 25 percent and running the game at double the speed.

(Photo: VG Memes)

If your significant other isn't keen on the idea of you purchasing another gaming console, just tell him or her that owning an Xbox will actually help you hone your sexual prowess.

Metro reports that a study conducted by the website VoucherCodesPro polled the partners of 1,747 gamers about which consoles they used, then asked how they'd rate their gaming S.O. in the bedroom. As it turns out, most people classified their partners as "good" or "average," as opposed to the much-preferred "excellent." Guess gaming doesn't make your fingers as dexterous as you thought?

Writes Metro:

The results saw just 11 per cent respond ‘excellent’, while most  - 27 per cent said their partner was ‘good’, 26 per cent said their partner was ‘average’ and a disappointing 20 per cent branded their partner’s bedroom skills as ‘below average’.

When VoucherCodesPro broke the data down, they discovered that 54 percent of Xbox users were described as "good" or above in bed, with 22 percent winning the "excellent" crown.

Meanwhile, PC gamers ranked the worst in bed. But what if you're an irresistible stud in World of Warcraft?

(Photo: Xbox live addicts)

Who says playing video games is nothing but a timesuck? The Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports that Jose Muñoz, an undocumented immigrant who's been living in the U.S. since age 1, used his extensive Xbox history to stay in the country. Take that, Mom!

Mr. Muñoz graduated from high school in 2005, but because his family visa had long since expired, he couldn't safely attend college or apply for a job without fear of being deported. Instead, he began to help around the house, and much like every other college-aged kid, spent a lot of time playing games on Xbox Live.

When President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Mr. Muñoz finally had a chance to remain in the country while working or attending school. The problem was that because Mr. Muñoz had lived under the radar since his graduation in 2005, he didn't have documents like paystubs or college transcripts to prove that he had lived in the U.S. consistently since then.

Luckily his attorney came up with a genius idea: using his Xbox Live account history to prove Mr. Muñoz's residency. And the idea worked--Mr. Muñoz can stay in the country for another two years, after which he can apply for deferment again. Plus, he'll never have to justify staying up late playing Bioshock ever again.

As for immigration reform: Zuck's on the case, don't you worry.

(Photo: Old Ass Gamers)

Anyone who has ever logged onto Xbox Live is well aware of the fact that the community is littered with rage-filled tweens who think shouting homophobic epithets at unsuspecting competitors is the very height of trash talking. It's enough to make you play all local games, especially as a woman, lest you be subjected to a slew of unimaginative insults every time you use your microphone or make a good kill.

A cadre of older gamers got so sick of going up against dexterous middle schoolers shouting at them to "dieeeee motherfucker" that they decided to create their own community where they could play Xbox amongst themselves. The Wall Street Journal reports that gamers reared on classics like Pacman are trading in their Nintendo consoles for new Xboxes, but the easy transition kind of stops there.

"You get these 12-year-old kids swearing and being obnoxious online," Thomas Abel, a creator of the older gamer hub Geezer Gamers, told The Journal. "You wonder where their parents are." Mr. Abel noted that in addition to the expletive-laced battles with competitors of games like Halo, he's also still recovering from getting his ass kicked in Chromehounds by "some 12-year-old girls from Japan."

The Journal also highlights the community 2old2play, where gamers 25 and older can congregate. The founder even met his soon-to-be wife, Tiffany Fary, there. "Halo played a huge role in our courtship," said Ms. Fary.

Hear that, over-25 single gamers? There's hope for you yet.

(Photo: LiveLeak)

What do you do when you lack the technology to create your own simulation of New York City under missile attack? You use footage from video games, of course!

Kotaku reports that a new space race propaganda video put online by North Korea's propaganda arm Uriminzokkiri depicts a city that looks an awful lot like New York being struck by missiles. Buildings begin to burn as an American flag waves overtop the footage. The video is couched as a dream sequence, showing the dreaming man aboard the rocket the country successfully tested in December.

"Somewhere in the United States, black clouds of smoke are billowing," reads the caption, according to LiveLeak.

But as Kotaku points out, the footage of New York in ruins is actually borrowed from the popular video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Even more bizarrely, the video is scored with the popular Michael Jackson/Lionel Richie song "We Are the World."

Is this some sort of ironic jab at the imperialistic nature of American pop culture, or do North Koreans just really really like MJ? Kim Jong-un does kind of seem like he'd be into all-night COD marathons.

We've reached out to COD publisher Activision for comment, though we have a pretty good feeling North Korea didn't reach out to them for permission.

Update:

Yup, Activision was none too happy with North Korea using its bestselling video game for propaganda purposes. The BBC reports that YouTube has taken the video down after a copyright complaint from the video game publisher.